We have just returned from our vacation in Spain, and the cold, rainy weather, combined with the hostile and unhappy looks of people here, compared with the sunny warmth of Spain (both literally and figuratively) have made us all a bit depressed. Our trip was pretty uneventful, after that awful Tuesday on which I last wrote. Mimi's wounds seem to have healed, as has Magdalene's eye, and neither of the boys have sustained major injuries. Sean got a bit of a shock when he went to pick up our usual car (a small hatchback with an extra row of seats in the back) and was presented with this monster. A breeze to drive in the streets of Nantes, and even easier in the tiny alleys of Madrid and Segovia. But, miraculously (or rather, thanks to Sean's amazing driving skills), the truck was unharmed when we returned it yesterday, despite a few very tight turns. Well, actually, I had already sworn never to drive in France, and certainly not anything of that size (where we had to fold in the sideview mirrors and I had to stand holding the gate of our courtyard so that Sean could drive in), but when we started the second leg of our trip there, Sean woke up with a migraine and it looked like we might be stuck in the Pyrenees for a few days unless I drove... I just fed Sean lots of ibuprofens and kept asking in a hypocritically concerned tone whether he was ok, and thanks be to God, he was ok enough to drive the monster.

We travelled in a very old fashioned way. The first day, we drove down the entire west coast of France and then through the Pyrenees, and stopped at the hotel Clementia in a town that is right on the border between France and Spain (Arneguy). The three older kids had one room, and Sean and I and Mimi the other, and since we were alone in the hotel, we could come out in the hall to see each other without any trouble. We had dinner there, whatever the innkeeper made us (only she did make a special dinner for Matthias, given his vegetarian propensities). The innkeeper was a Basque woman (that part of France and Spain is called the Basque country, and some people there would like it to be independent of both countries) whose grandfather had been Spanish, but she had never known him, because when she was growing up, the border was closed (during the war, and even after, under Franco). We also ate breakfast there, it felt like we were part of the family.

When we left the hotel, we crossed over into Spain, and went for a hike in the Pyrenees. Simeon could not stop exclaiming about how happy he was in these wide green meadows, and in general, everyone's spirits were very much lifted after the long long drive the day before. Sean had wanted to drive this way to see the pass of Roncevaux, both because it is the site of a legendary battle (where the warrior Roland, who was in the rearguard of Charlemagne's army, singlehandedly stopped the moors from advancing into any more of Europe than they had already conquered, but was too proud to call the rest of the army back to him and so perished from his heroism), and because we spent 6 years in Toronto living on a street called Roncesvalles, and because he's thinking of staying in that monastery you can see down in the valley here when he and the older children walk the path of Santiago de Compostella this summer with the Smiths. Anyway, the pass surprised us at the turn of a hill. Sean and Magdalene stayed there (Sean was nursing his migraine, and I was eager to get him well) while I pressed further up the hills with the boys and Mimi (Mimi had been bribed with candy).

We got to Spain on a Friday. On Saturday, we visited the Prado museum, where Mimi lasted about an hour, just enough time to see the one room I wanted to see (Bosch and Breugel) and one painting by Goya. I took her and Matti home after that, and Sean and the older kids got to see the Velasquez, Fra Angelico, Titian, and many others. After that we played soccer in the park with my aunt and uncle (who are the kids' godparents and were acting very much like doting grandparents, spoiling the kids and taking very good care of all of us). I have to confess that the Spanish kids who joined in the game beat us all. They were good at soccer, but they were also much friendlier than any French kids we know in Nantes. The boys had no trouble finding play mates all over Spain, even though they speak a lot less Spanish than French.

The next day, we went up to a village to the north of Madrid where my aunt and uncle have a summer house. The program in the village (Torrelaguna)

included eating churros (deep fried dough, above), playing pelota with my uncle at the Fronton that is across from their house, going to church in the most beautiful church we'd seen thus far, a church dedicated to Mary Magdalene with a statue of a penitent but rather provocative Mary Magdalene in the middle of the huge gilt altar, surrounded by fat cherubs in the most amazing Spanish Baroque style. Those are stork nests on the bell tower, and the bells rotate completely, making the most amazing amount of noise. We also ate further incredible treats (it was All Saints day, so we ate little cookies called los huesos de los santos--the bones of the saints, which I undoubtedly misspelled because I can't speak a word of Spanish-- made of marzipan and filled with 'marrow' that is made of Yemas, a mixture of egg yolk and sugar that is a favorite filling in Northern Spain--I used not to like it, but I think it must grow on you, because I really liked it now. Also, on All Saints, you get to eat deep fried cream puffs in every flavor--chocolate, coffee, strawberry, cream, Catalan cream, etc.) After all that, we had a walk in the countryside among ripe

olive trees and bitter almond trees, in search of an ancient moorish signal tower that you can see from the village, but which we never reached (I had written a few chapters in my last novel about this village, and these included a scene in which the characters take a walk to this tower--atalaya--so I was really doing research). Matthias collected hundreds of almonds in the shell, and then spent the hour before dinner smashing them with a hammer (but I didn't let him eat too many, because bitter almonds are high in arsenic, and only to be eaten in small doses).

The next day we drove an hour north through the mountains to the town of Segovia. There are three great monuments in Segovia: the Roman aqueduct, the mozarab cathedral, and the Alcazar castle. Because Mimi had fallen asleep in her poussette when we got to the castle, I didn't get to go in, but walked down from the fortifications to the small Templar's church miles below. I had wanted to wave to Sean and the kids up in the highest tower of the castle, but the people looked like ants, so, though I waved, they never saw me (I wonder if that counts as waving to them, or just as waving all by myself like a fool).

The Roman aqueduct at the point where it meets the fortifications of the city: I ran the whole length of it, it's at least a half a mile long, with several turns. I found it really amazing, this high beautiful structure more than 2000 years old and holding together without any mortar. It made me think of the roman empire as being more contemporary in its conception of civic improvements than I'd ever thought in the past: here is this small city in Spain, and the great empire redistributes tax money in order to bring running water to its people. And in this beautiful, gracefully arched way.

The Cathedral. Highlight for Mimi: a painting with a tree on which people are having a party, "like in Go Dogs Go, a dog party" while a skeleton is hacking down the tree. Highlight for Matthias, a cloister on the inside with a well where he could run and play. Simeon liked the cathedral treasure (all that gold and coral), and I liked a twelfth century carving of the mother and child, as well as a fourteenth century carving of Christ Pantocrator (which Mimi immitated, with her two fingers in the air). All the ceilings are painted with arabic motifs, and the whole cathedral glows yellow from outside and in, from the color of the local stone.

The Alcazar with the tower where I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the kids as I walked down to the Templar's church below, as well as the tomb of that great Spanish saint John of the Cross.

On the last morning (we left on Tuesday mid-day), my wonderful aunt babysat the three little ones while Magda and Sean and I went into the center of Madrid to buy a few things and see this: the Plaza Mayor, a beautiful plaza surrounded by arched galleries and gateways through which the city appears sharp and full of light, but in such different tones of color that it seems to be in a different world. Having a coffee there is really the done thing, at least for tourists, so we did.

After that, we drove up to the northern coast of Spain, regretfully passing little villages with castle ruins and little villages with gorgeous churches, little villages in green meadows among rolling hills, little villages shadowed by enormous black bull statues (almost all the villages in Spain have, aside from a fronton for playing pelota--a form of squash, I gather--a bull ring or a round plaza for bull play)... We were really sad to leave Spain. Aside from the Basque country, where the villages were still beautiful, full of high fortified churches with three or four levels of inner balconies, and where we spent the night (in the town of Ascain), the French villages that we passed on our way first to Poitiers to pick up Tipomme, whom we had left with my brother there, and then home to Nantes, were not nearly as beautiful or inviting of exploration.

I guess the culture of Spain, from what I could tell in my very short visit, seems much more permeable to American culture, much more compatible, and so I like everything better about Spain than France. For instance, here in Nantes, there have been no intimations of Halloween at all (wait, I lie, Simeon did make a tiny jack-o-lantern at school, but that has been it), but in Spain, the stores were decorated with orange and witches, and for a few days before Halloween, you'd see kids dressed up in costumes, or signs for Halloween parties, and posters for horrible American horror movies coming out on the day of. None of it amounting to much at all, compared to the US, no candy, no trick or treating, although the kids in my aunt and uncle's apartment complex were having a party in the central yard, and the doorbell rang a few times, though we didn't answer it--but no tricks were perpetrated against us... although, the water was cut for a day... maybe it was the kids. Anyway, people in Madrid smile at you, and they interact with the kids in a way that seems normal at home, the kids are on the whole rather nice, they smile too, and are welcoming to our boys. Here in Nantes, no one smiles, and if they do not know your kid, she could be a bug for all they care about her and interact with her. They look at me funny when I try to interact with their kid, and the kids are so ----(whatever the antonym of inclusive is, exclusive doesn't really fit, cliquish? closed off? excluding, yeah, I guess that's right). Anyway, we prefer Spain, that's the new logo for our family.